EU Energy Commissioner "Can't Rule Out" $200 Oil By 2011 - AFP

[hatrack]

MADRID (AFP) - Oil prices could reach 200 dollars a barrel, the European Union's energy commissioner said in an interview published Monday in Spain, two days ahead of an OPEC meeting to decide daily output levels. "When I arrived at the European Commission in 2004, a barrel of oil cost 52 dollars. It has doubled in three years. We can't rule out that in 2011 it will be at 200 dollars," Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs told business daily El Economista.

"What I am saying is, in part, a joke, but it shouldn't surprise us," he said, adding that when US investment bank Goldman Sachs predicted oil could reach 100 dollars three years ago, "everyone took it as a joke." "We can't rule out 200 dollars because in the last two years, all of us have been completely mistaken, thinking that what is in fact happening now was impossible," Piebalgs said.

Oil prices struck a record-high 100 dollars at the start of January and on Friday the price of New York crude hit a fresh peak of 103.05 dollars per barrel.

The 13 members of OPEC, who together pump 40 percent of the world's oil, are due to meet Wednesday in Vienna, Austria to decide on daily output levels, currently set at 29.67 million barrels. In a statement made ahead of the meeting, OPEC President Chakib Khelil, who is also Algeria's energy minister, said the body will either hold output steady of cut production "to restore market balance and stability."

EDIT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080303/bs_afp/commoditiesenergyoilpriceeu_080303111310;_ylt=AvzmZn1_ZtNQ27EtCtwvf1KAsnsA

[phantom power]

1. These people sound more like us every day.

[hatrack]

2. Yes, but why are they so slow?

:evilgrin:

[phantom power]

4. Are they slow, or are we faster than expected?

[hatrack]

6. Only XemaSab knows for sure!

:toast:

[Skink]

3. If that's true the dollar will have lost all it's value.....

so by then Oil will be traded in many different currencies.

[pscot]

5. When Matt Simons predicted $180 oil

a few years ago, all the wise-guys said he was crazy. The Yerginites were still insisting there were no supply constraints. There must be an upper limit; a point where price chokes off demand, but who knows what that might be. The Germans are paying $7.00 per gallon and still driving their big Mercedes 140 miles an hour when they aren't sitting in gridlock.

[tom_paine]

7. Depends on how badly the dollar tanks.

I mean, oil would only be about $70-$80/bbl if we didn't have the Bushie Vampires liquidating our assets, stripping them and stealing them or selling them to their Tyrant Pals, thus causing the cascading effect of Imperial Amnerikan economic collapse and causingthe dollar to plummet.

But it has only just begun to plummet, unless Obama or Clinton are permitted to assume the Imperial Throne of Amerika, something I doubt very much no matter how many people vote for them. Even then, I suspect a brief intermission only, a time of rest if you will, between vampire-bites, but no real change of the status quo.

In any case, if McCain is installed on the throne, it will be a clear signal that American freedom is over and the looting is going to into overdrive as the elites strive to prepare protected positions when the whole thing goes in the toilet (do we have twenty years? probably not. ten? maybe, if Clinton or Obama sit on the throne between Evil Bushies. five? if McCain is installed, likely). They have to hire half of us to kill the other half.

The point is, the dollar's health is now directly tied into America's economic strength and immoral values, especially after we stole about $1 trillion in the subprime con. More than Peak Oil, at least in the short term, the pathetically weak and getting weaker Imperial worthless dollar will control how fast $200/bbl. oil comes.

Amerika is a hollowed out shell of its former self, with a weak-minded, cowardly, apathetic, and deluded TV addled populace.

Fertile ground for evil tyrants like the Bushies.

[Javaman]

8. $200 by 2011? that's pretty optimistic. nt